Sunday, 31 August 2014

A unique experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory called the Holometer has started collecting data that will answer some mind-bending questions about our universe – including whether we live in a hologram. Much like characters on a television show would not know that their seemingly 3-D world exists only on a 2-D screen, we could be clueless that our 3-D space is just an illusion. The information about everything in our universe could actually be encoded in tiny packets in two dimensions. Get close enough to your TV screen and you’ll see pixels, small points of data that make a seamless image if you stand back. Scientists think that the universe’s information may be contained in the same way and that the natural “pixel size” of space is roughly 10 trillion trillion times smaller than an atom, a distance that physicists refer to as the Planck scale.

In theory,the super-cavitationalvesselcould, under thewaterreaches thespeed of sound,orabout 5,800km /h, which, according tothe reportof CaliforniaInstitute of Technologyin 2001, could lead toreducedtravel timefrom one to theother shoreof the Atlantic Oceanto less thanhour,whiletravelingfrom one to theother shoreof the Pacificoceantook abouta hundred minutes.

This isfor nowonly in theory, scientistsare skepticalofthe practice.

In addition to Russia,the development ofvesselsand weaponsbased onsuper-cavitationtechnologydeal withcountries likeGermany,Iran andthe United States, according tothe portal.

Sunday, 24 August 2014

Let’s say it straight. Mars is, without any doubt our next step in space exploration, sparking our imagination for many years in spaceflight history. After sending tons of scientific rovers, it’s about time to send human pioneers to start colonizing the Red Planet. The only question is when will we reach that highly anticipated milestone? “Sending humans to Mars around 2033 should be the single organizing principle of future space exploration,” Professor G. Scott Hubbard of Stanford University and former NASA Ames Research Center director told astrowatch.net. He will give a speech on Sept. 6 about Mars exploration at the European Mars Conference (EMC) 2014 that will take place in Podzamcze, Poland.

Friday, 22 August 2014

It’s a phenomenon called sonoluminescence. Sonoluminescence is a physical occurrence by which sound turns into light. Scientists have been trying for 70 years to explain it, but have had no success. No one has managed to explain how a bubble of air in water can focus sound to cause light, but it happens.

Some minor revelations have surfaced, however. At first, physicists thought friction was to blame, but in the late 1980s, they discovered that a sound wave’s path expanded bubbles and heated the gas inside them to temperatures hotter than the sun’s surface. That collapse with the heat, they thought, created a glowing plasma. Thirty years later, that is still the going theory.

However, researchers have suggested that different physical mechanisms must be at work and that there must be multiple kinds of sonoluminescence. What’s been concretely determined so far, though, is that it has to do with the size of the bubble as well as the OH emission from the bubble when it bursts.

If the science goes much further, it could be possible that some day sound and gas could be used to light underwater areas, exceeding the limitations of conventional lights.

Sunday, 17 August 2014

Seeing is believing. Our great visions of space exploration require also a trustable vision system. Curiosity rover snapping dozens of pictures every day is capable to see the Red Planet in different way than the human eye. Needless to say, human vision is highly adapted to the specific conditions here on Earth. “The exploration of Mars will require radically different qualities of the vision system because of both the Mars atmospheric properties and the range of things that this vision system will need to be able to see.” Yosef Akhtman of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) told astrowatch.net. “In particular using an RGB camera, which was developed to mimic human vision on Earth is a bit naive and far from optimum.” Akhtman will give a speech on Sept. 7 regarding adaptive vision system for extraterrestrial exploration at the European Mars Conference (EMC) that will take place in Podzamcze, Poland.

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

The myth isthat you can notbend thepapermorethan eight times. The realityis that you canbendto infinity, ifyou have alarge enoughpaper, andenough energy. However, there is one smallproblem. If youbendit 103times, you get the thicknessof the entire universe.

How something thin like paper can getthe thicknessof the universe?

The answer liesin mathematics. It is a simpleexponential function. Every time youbend thepaperin half,you doubleits thickness. At the thirdbend, you getthe thicknessof the nail. On theseventhfold,you getthickness likepad.

Sunday, 10 August 2014

Curtin University planetary scientists have shed some light on the bombardment history of our solar system by studying a unique volcanic meteorite recovered in Western Australia (WA). Captured on camera seven years ago falling on the WA side of the Nullarbor Plain, the Bunburra Rockhole Meterorite has unique characteristics that suggest it came from a large asteroid that has never before been identified. Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, along with colleagues Professor Phil Bland and Dr Gretchen Benedix from Curtin’s Department of Applied Geology, believe the meteorite is evidence that a series of collisions of asteroids occurred more than 3.4 billion years ago. “This meteorite is definitely one-of-a-kind,” Dr Jourdan said. “Nearly all meteorites we locate come from Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the solar system. But after studying the meteorite’s composition and orbit, it appears it derived from a large, unidentified asteroid that was split apart during the collisions.”

Friday, 8 August 2014

There's a Lightning storm in Venezuela that's been going on since at least the 16th century!

Relámpago del Catatumbo (Catatumbo Lightning) is an atmospheric phenomenon that occurs where the Catatumbo River meets the Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela.

How do they happen? The winds blowing accross the Maracaibo lake and other swampy plains around the area meet with the Andes mountain ridges. These winds carry a lot of heat and moisture, which are perfect for creating electric charges. The result? Lightning for 280 times an hour, 10 hours a day for 160 nights a year!

It is believed that the phenomenon has been going around since at least the 16th century (and most likely, even more than that). The first time this storm was reported in writing was an epic poem called "la Dragontea," by Lope de Vega in 1597, which told of the defeat of Sir Francis Drake at this site. Drake tried to attack the city of Maracaibo, but the lightning gave away his position and the city was able to respond in time.

All the electric activity makes the Catatumbo Lightning the largest single generator of Ozone in the planet. The lightning is visible up to 400 km away! Because of this, it's also called as the Maracaibo Beacon.

Friday, 1 August 2014

It's a great time to be alive when all
of the cliches seen in sci-fi movies time and time again are starting to
become a reality.

Men landing on the moon, versatile rovers roam Mars and now we're just a
couple years away from starting plant life on our neighboring celestial
bodies.

Arabidopsis is a small flowering plant that is closely related to
mustard or cabbage, both useful when trying to colonize another planet
ecologically. More importantly, it contains one of the model organism
that is key for studying plant biology, especially since it's the first
plant to have its entire genome sequenced.

NASA, the American space agency, set its sights on Arabidopsis to be
part of the first garden on the Moon and Mars. Ambitiously, NASA plans
to have it planted on the Moon by 2015, as in next year. Mars isn't that
far behind with a target date of 2021.

This very well could be the first step of plans to one day send men and
women to live on distant worlds, hopefully with food and water already
set up for them.